Remind yourself of the passage in Scene One from page 4: Blanche: They told me to take a streetcar… to page 7: I spy, I spy! What key ideas do you find in this sequence and which details have led you to them? As is typical of many plays and novels both at the time Tennessee Williams was writing and in modern society A Streetcar Named Desire provides social commentary on the idea of class, or, namely, the differences between classes.

Through setting the play in New Orleans, a town which seems to be a more progressive southern American town in the 1940s, Williams’ provides his audience with the perfect setting to play out the battle between the upper and lower class.

He quickly establishes the difference between not only the classes but also the ‘new world’ and the ‘old world’, with the new world represented by, in this scene, Eunice, although typically in the play the audience associates Stanley with the new world, and the old world, as is typical throughout the play, represented by Blanche. Even from this early sequence in Williams’ play he demonstrates his interest in the interaction between the two worlds and, more prominently, which will outlast the other.

Williams quickly establishes the difference between the old and new worlds through the characters of Blanche and Eunice, with Blanche, associated with her great big [house] with white columns, Belle Reve – meaning ‘beautiful dream’ in French and clearly meant to represent the lower class perception of a dreamlike, wealthy upbringing for upper class Southern families – distinctly typifying the apparently affluent old world, and Eunice, with her typically lower class speech patterns, such as watchin’, or that’s what she’s at, contrasting with Blanche’s typically upper class language, and admiration for the tales of Blanche’s wealth indicating the idea of the new world, a poor, less educated society than the old world. Although this early impression of Blanche is perhaps different from the view of her which the audience comes to develop as the play progresses, her place in the old world is established from her first appearance and can be considered to be one of the only things about Blanche which the audience is not prompted to question. This can clearly be seen as Williams suggesting the old world to be more – or less — than its superficial appearance. Blanche is introduced as a very uptight character, seen as she sits in a chair very stiffly and catches her breath with a startled gesture after the minor disturbance of a cat [screeching].

Furthermore, as soon as Blanche begins to behave rudely towards Eunice, mentioning that she would like to be left alone, who the audience most likely views as a kindly, friendly character, she immediately alienates herself from not only Eunice[1] but also the audience, creating for herself a pretentious, snobbish impression. Clearly, Williams here is trying to evoke our support for Eunice, and by extension the lower-middle class which she stands for, leading us to question Williams’ opinions regarding the industrious new world fixated on the American Dream and personified by second generation immigrants such as Stanley, and the antiquated, fragile old world embodied by Blanche.

However, Williams does also present Blanche to be somewhat atypical of the world she symbolises, seen when she pours half a tumbler of whisky and tosses it down – this suggests that she may have some form of drinking problem not typically associated in theatre with upper class ‘Southern Belles’ such as Blanche, which helps stress Williams’ ideas through a somewhat shocking moment for the audience. As such, the ambiguity presented here by Williams only emphasises his clear interest in the intrinsic differences between the old world and the new world, and the idea that one must triumph over the way. The importance of masculinity and male dominance over women is inherent in this clash between the two contrasting worlds, as, despite the fact that men obviously override women in both societies, one stands for old fashioned courtship and the other believes in harsh, almost brutal treatment of women by men, focusing on the idea of control rather than respect.

Therefore, it seems logical that the two worlds hold vastly different views on the concept of desire, with the old world perhaps viewing it as, although an important part of life, a part not to be flaunted and to only be considered following a traditional relationship, the new world clearly allows their culture to be at least somewhat dictates by it. This stark contrast between the views of the old world and the new on such a matter clearly fuels the ambivalence between them, and the introduction to this idea in the early sequences of the play are key in explaining the role desire plays in the climax of the play and its inclusion in the title of the play itself. Desire is a key theme not only in this sequence but also in the entire play, exemplified by its title, A Streetcar Named Desire. Its two lead characters display opposing ideas of desire, with Stanley allowing desire to influence nearly verything in his life and Blanche appearing to be fearful of allowing desire to dictate her decisions, shown even in this early sequence with Williams, in this sequence, providing the audience with an impression of Blanche as a pure character, although an unlikeable one, describing her as dressed in a white suit, and incongruous to the setting, a clear contrast with Stanley and Mitch’s blue denim work clothes identifying them as working class men. Stella, although she comes from the old world along with her sister, Blanche, is drawn into the new world, as there she can revolve her life around her desire and remain blissfully ignorant of the harsh reality of the circumstances surrounding her.

Blanche’s description of her journey clearly explains to the audience her lack of understanding of her sister’s lifestyle, as she took a streetcar named desire… one called Cemeteries and [got] off at – Elysian Fields[2]! This shows the audience that Blanche links desire with death, and through this presents the views of the old world towards the role of desire in society[3]. It can also be suggested that this view possibly reflects Tennessee Williams’ own, as it is essentially, we find out later in the play, Blanche’s succumbing to her own desire which sends her life into a downwards spiral. Overall, Williams clearly shows his interest in the ideas of not only the conflict between the industrious new world and the fragile old world, but also gender differences, male dominance and desire.

His exact stance on these ideas are never explicitly mentioned, meaning that this ambiguity only heightens the audience’s interest in them and prompts them to form their own opinions, possibly Williams’ main aim in creating a Streetcar Named Desire in the first place. WORD COUNT: with quotes: 1105 without quotes: 1035 ———————– [1]Eunice here replies I’ll make myself scarce and is clearly offended, a response which can perhaps be said to foreshadow Blanche’s eventual alienation of everyone around here and, by extension, the new world as a whole, and on a greater scale the eventual success of the new world in securing power over the old world, which is certainly seen by the end of the play with Stanley’s rape and incarceration of Blanche. 2]Elysian fields, in Greek mythology, is the place where the souls of those who live a good life or die a heroic death go once they have died, and therefore here represents the after life. [3] The discussion between Blanche and Eunice which follows only further underlines the differences between the two worlds’ perceptions of desire, with Eunice insisting to an uncomprehending Blanche that this here is Elysian Fields and thus explicitly explaining to the audience that, although the new world see this society absorbed by desire as an ideal one, Blanche, here a proxy for the old world, claims that they mustn’t have – understood, therefore showing that the old world fails to comprehend those in the new world allowing desire to essentially dictate their lives.

Author: Brandon Johnson

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